Donald Trump Not the First Conspiracy Theory President

While President Trump has been criticized over the years for asking politically incorrect questions about unanswered mysteries, other inquisitive men have occupied the White House as well. JFK, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, for instance, were reportedly very interested in certain unanswered questions.

By Donald Jeffries

President Donald Trump has excited independent-thinking Americans with his seeming fondness for what the mainstream media reflexively calls “conspiracy theories.” Trump used terms familiar to conspiracy researchers everywhere during his 2016 presidential campaign. His repeated jabs at “globalists” and “globalism” were especially noticeable. His “America first” slogan hadn’t been heard on a political stage since a movement by that name lobbied against the U.S. entering World War II. Because of this, the establishment cringed at the term, and compared Trump and his followers to Nazis.

Even before his presidential campaign, Trump questioned the murky facts about Barack Obama’s past, for which he was smeared as a “birther.” He boldly declared, in a national television interview, that “[Obama] may not have been born in this country.” In another speech, he stated, “The people that went to school with him, they don’t even know who he is.” After Loretta Fuddy, who had verified what many considered to be a fraudulent birth certificate for Obama, died in a December 2013 plane crash, citizen Trump tweeted out, “How amazing, the state health director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

Trump has long spoken about the obvious links between vaccines and autism, even mentioning the subject in the Republican presidential campaign debates. He also jokingly associated Ted Cruz’s father with Lee Harvey Oswald. He noted that many people doubt the official version of Vince Foster’s death, although, in typical Trump fashion, he would go on to name the man who led the cover-up in the Foster case as his nominee to the Supreme Court. He questioned the phony nature of the official unemployment figures, although, again, he brags about those same figures now. In 2012, citizen Trump called global warming a “hoax.” Trump went on Michael Savage’s radio show and openly questioned the official story of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s strange death. He was clearly aware of the dubious details, noting that Scalia’s face “is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.”

Regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Trump has said the government “did know it was coming . . . they did have advance notice.” Trump early on remarked about how there must have been powerful explosives in the World Trade Center buildings.

He even alluded to the 2001 death of then Congressman Joe Scarborough’s young, attractive aide Lori Klausutis, whose body was found in his Florida office. After a typically petty November 2017 feud with the Morning Joe host, Trump tweeted out, “And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”

While no other president has ever been as conspiratorial-minded as Trump—at least in public, anyway—there have been other “conspiracy theorists” in the White House. John F. Kennedy, before becoming the victim of the highest-profile conspiracy of the 20th century, gave a wonderful speech in 1961 in which he declared, “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy.” He was speaking of the communists, but his words can be interpreted, and have been interpreted in a much broader sense. Kennedy, of course, famously vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” In 2017, WikiLeaks would use this well-known quote as the password to decrypt its latest release of CIA documents.

Noted JFK assassination researcher David Lifton, author of the book Best Evidence, claimed that Ronald Reagan was keenly interested in the JFK assassination, and, in fact, regularly kept a stack of books on the subject on his nightstand.

During his presidential campaign, Reagan blasted Jimmy Carter and the fact that “19 key members of the administration are or have been members of the Trilateral Commission.” Reagan would predictably install Trilateralists like CIA Director William Casey and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in his cabinet, not to mention selecting Trilateralist and Council of Foreign Relations stalwart George H.W. Bush as vice president.

According to Bill Clinton’s Associate Attorney General Webb Hubbell, upon entering the White House, he was instructed by Clinton: “I want you to find the answers to two questions for me. One, who killed JFK? And two, are there UFOs?” Clinton would famously declare at a press conference, in the midst of all the furor created by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, that he was satisfied that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. Clinton doesn’t seem to have done anything to ferret out the truth about UFOs, either.

Although he almost certainly knows better, Trump would publicly state that he believed Oswald shot Kennedy. And despite bragging repeatedly about doing so, he would delay the release of still-classified JFK assassination documents until 2021.

Kennedy, of course, was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Reagan was the victim of an unsuccessful assassination attempt shortly after entering office. Trump has received more threats than all other presidents combined. Will history repeat itself?

Donald Jeffries is a highly respected author and researcher whose work on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations and other high crimes of the Deep State has been read by millions of people across the world. Jeffries is also the author of two books currently being sold by the AFP Online Store.